Читать книгу In Pursuit of the English - Doris Lessing - Страница 6

Next day I began to look for a job, and the attitude of the household changed. Rose said: ‘Now you’re going to be a working girl like me. I’m glad.’ But Flo was disappointed in me, even offended. ‘You should have told us, shouldn’t you,’ she said. ‘Told you what?’ ‘Now you’re nice and comfortable up in that little flat that’s so nice.’ ‘Flo, I’m looking for a real flat, I told you.’ ‘Ah, my God!’ I heard her complain, as she descended the stairs. ‘Ah, my Lord, she’ll be the death of me yet, they all will.’

‘You just stick it out,’ said Rose ‘And I’ve told Flo, I’m not having that dirty Miss Powell in the room next to me. Either her or me, I said to Flo.’

Next day negotiations began. Flo took me into the big room and said I wouldn’t like it, not really, not with all those cracks in the walls. I said I would like it. There was a small room on the landing below, with a concealed cooker in it. My son could sleep in that. The two rooms would suit me very well.

‘And what,’ asked Flo, ‘were you thinking of paying?’

‘But it’s the landlord’s business to fix the rent,’ I said.

‘Oh dear,’ said Flo. ‘Oh dear, oh dear! Drat it. Oh, my Lord, and Dan’s at work, too, and I’m on my own.’

‘Well, you could discuss it with him.’

‘Poor Miss Powell, she needs a big room for herself.’

‘If a single woman wants a big room, then a woman with a child surely does?’

‘But you wouldn’t call her single,’ said Flo. She began to laugh. ‘Oh, that Bobby, he’s a case. And those great big eyes of his. When he looks at me, I go all funny where Dan would kill me if he knew.’

‘Well, I’m quite sure his beautiful eyes make it easy for him to get a room for Miss Powell.’

‘Ah, that poor Miss Powell. The landlord where she is is being ever so nasty. I’m not nasty, am I, dear? And look how nice my Oar and your Peter play.’

‘Yes, I know. He loves being here.’

And you do, too, I can tell. Ah, my Lord, what shall I do, I shall have to talk to Dan.’

‘That would be a good idea.’

For a week I stayed at the top of the house, hoping for the room next to Rose, waiting for my job to start. Under the roof I was cut off from the rest of the house. The two rooms under me were empty. They were still full of rubble and mess from the bombing. The plan now was that Dan should clean them out and distemper them, and then either I or Miss Powell would take them. I said I didn’t like them. Flo said that was because I couldn’t imagine them cleaned up and painted. Dan was going to start work, in his evenings. Then I would see. I said, either the big room or nothing. It was a war of nerves.

Under the roof it was like sitting on top of an anthill, a tall sharp peak of baked earth, that seems abandoned, but which sounds, when one puts one’s ear to it, with a continuous vibrant humming. Even when the door shut, it was not long before the silence grew into an orchestra of sound. Beneath my floor a tap dripped softly all day, in a blithe duet with the dripping of the tap on the landing. Two floors down, where the Skeffingtons lived, was a radio. Sometimes she forgot it when she went to work, and, as the hours passed, the wavelength slipped, so that melodies and voices flowed upwards, blurring and mingling. This sound had for accompaniment the splashing water, like conversation heard through music and dripping rain. In the darkening afternoons I was taken back to a time when I lay alone at night and listened to people talking through several walls, while the rain streamed from the eves. Sometimes it was as if the walls had dissolved, and I was left sitting under a tree, listening to birds talking from branch to branch while the last fat drops of a shower spattered on the leaves, and a ploughman yelled encouragement to his beasts in the field over the hill. Sometimes I put my ear to the wall and heard how, as the trains went past and the buses rocked their weight along the street, shock after shock came up through brick and plaster, so that the solid wall had the fluidity of dancing atoms, and I felt the house, the street, the pavement, and all the miles and miles of houses and streets as a pattern of magical balances, a weightless structure, as if this city hung on water, or on sound. Being alone in that little box of ceiling board and laths frightened me.

At last Flo came up and said that the two rooms beneath me were ready, and I could move down when I liked. I examined them and said no. They were very small. She said: ‘You can have the big room for five pounds a week.’ She sounded offhand, because of her fright at my probable reaction.

‘Don’t be silly,’ I said.

She laughed and said, ‘Then you say.’

‘Two pounds,’ I said.

‘Ah, my Lord, are you laughing at me?’

‘You say,’ I said.

‘Four pounds fifteen.’

‘Two pounds ten.’

‘Darling, sweetheart, you’re laughing at your poor Flo.’

‘You say, then.’

At last we settled for three-ten, a sum which caused Rose to be angry with me. ‘You could have got it for three-five,’ she said. ‘You make me cross, you really do.’

‘Well, I shall be next to you, and Peter will be very happy that we’re staying.’

‘All the same, why throw five bob a week into the dustcan? Well, you make Flo clean your room for you, then.’

‘Is it likely?’

‘Well, I’m not going to, and someone must – where was you dragged up, I’d like to know, you don’t even know how to clean a floor?’

‘We were spoiled. We had servants.’

‘You had something. Because to watch you sweeping is enough to make a cat laugh.’

Flo and Dan and Rose and I stood in the empty big room that evening. ‘It’s such a lovely room,’ said Flo. ‘And you can hardly notice them cracks.’

‘What we’re here for, is furniture,’ said Rose.

‘You can have that lovely bed from upstairs.’

‘She’ll want somewhere for her clothes,’ said Rose.

‘You can have that lovely cupboard from the landing.’

Rose said: ‘You make me sick.’

‘But we want to furnish her nice, dear.’

‘You do, do you? Then I’ll show you how.’ With which Rose ran all over the house, marking out pieces to be put in my room. Dan did her bidding, silently; while Flo stood, unconsciously wringing her hands as one bit of furniture after another came to rest in my room, and the little room downstairs. Rose told me afterwards that she had said in the basement that if they didn’t treat me right, she’d be so ashamed she’d leave. Since Rose did half of Flo’s work for her, this was effective. When the rooms were ready, Rose said: ‘That’s a bit more like.’ Dan gave her a grudging look of admiration. By this time we were all in good humour. Flo saw Dan looking, and said sharply, but laughing: ‘And you keep your eyes off poor Rose. I know what you’re thinking. Can’t look at a woman without thinking of it!’ Dan gave her his bared-teeth grin. Rose said: ‘Oh, shut up. And now I’ll help you get the supper, Flo.’

‘I should think so,’ said Flo. ‘Dear me, oh, dear me, life is so hard these days.’

Rose gave me a wink as she went out, and whispered, ‘Now you settle yourself, and don’t you let Flo take any of this stuff back tomorrow. I’m telling you for your own good. I’ll be in after supper for a nice chat.’

Now I was in the heart of the house. Immediately above me, in two large rooms, were the Skeffingtons. I had not yet seen them. He was away most of the time. She left for work before I did, and once she was in her rooms, seldom came out. I knew about them from Flo, through a succession of nods, winks, and hoarse whispers. Her: ‘She’s ever such a sweet woman’ – made, as these remarks always were, as if a sweet tenant were something I was getting extra, thrown in, for the rent, was sometimes: ‘Poor thing, she’s brave, and she pays her rent so regular.’ And sometimes: ‘What she has to put up with, no one would believe. Men are all the same, beasts, every one.’ On the other hand, she often observed with lip-licking smile that Mr Skeffington was just like a film star, and Mrs Skeffington didn’t appreciate him. These two states of mind were determined by whether we got a good night’s sleep or not. Usually not. There were few nights I was not woken by the persistent frightened crying of a child in nightmare. The words ‘I’m not naughty, I’m not naughty’, were wailed over and over again. I heard the sharp release of bedsprings, bare feet sliding on the floor, then several loud slaps. ‘You’re naughty. You’re a naughty girl.’ The voice was high and hysterical. This duet might keep up for an hour or more. At last the child would fall asleep; soon afterwards an alarm clock vibrated; and I would hear Mrs Skeffington’s voice: ‘Oh, my God, my God,’ and the tired release of a weighted bed. The kettle shrieked, cups clattered, and her voice: ‘Crying half the night and now I can’t wake you. Oh, goodness, gracious me, what shall I do with you, Rosemary?’

I knew all the tones of her voice before I ever saw her; but I found it impossible to form a picture of her. As soon as she had the child inside the door, the tussle began: the high, exasperated weary voice, and the child nagging back. Or sometimes there was exhausted sobbing – first the woman, and then the child. I would hear: ‘Oh, darling, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Rosemary. I can’t help it.’

Once I heard her on the stairs, coming home from work in conversation with Flo. Her voice was now formal and bright: ‘Really I don’t know what I shall do with Rosemary, she’s so naughty.’ She gave a fond, light laugh.

From the child, sullenly: ‘I’m not naughty.’

‘Yes, you are naughty, Rosemary. How dare you answer me back.’ Although the voice was still social, sharpness had come into it.

From Flo, a histrionically resigned: ‘Yes, I know, dear. Mine’s the death of me, she drives me mad all day.’

From Aurora: ‘I don’t drive you mad.’

‘Yes, you do. Don’t answer your mother like that.’ There was the sound of a sharp slap.

Flo’s exchange with Aurora was an echo of Mrs Skeffington’s with her child, because Flo could not help copying the behaviour of whoever she was with. But the burst of wild sobs from Aurora was quite unconvincing; her tears were displays of drama adapted to the occasion. From one second to the next she would stop crying and her face beamed with smiles. Her crying was never the miserable frightened wailing of the other little girl.

One morning I met a woman on the landing who I thought must be new to the house. She said brightly: ‘Gracious me, I’m in your way, I’m so sorry,’ and skipped sideways. It was Mrs Skeffington – that ‘gracious me’ could be no one else. Under her arm she balanced a tiny child. She was a tall slight creature, with carefully fluffed out fair hair arranged in girlish wisps on her forehead and neck. Her large clear brown eyes were anxiously friendly; and her smile was tired. There were dark shadows around her eyes and at the corners of her nose. The baby who sounded so forlorn and defiant at night was about fifteen months old. She was a fragile child, with her mother’s wispy pretty hair and enormous brown eyes.

‘Get out of the lady’s way,’ said Mrs Skeffington to the baby, which she had set down – apparently for the purpose of being able to scold her. ‘Get out of the lady’s way, you naughty, naughty girl.’

‘But she’s not in my way.’

‘I do so hope Rosemary doesn’t keep you awake at nights,’ she said politely, just as if I did not hear every movement of her life, and she of mine.

‘Not at all,’ I said.

‘I’m so glad, she’s a real pickle,’ said Mrs Skeffington, injecting the teasing fondness into her voice that went with the words. She tripped upstairs, and as her door shut her voice rose into hysteria: ‘Don’t dawdle so, Rosemary, how many times must I tell you.’

‘I’m not doddling,’ said the baby, whose vocabulary was sharpened by need into terrifying precocity.

Mr Skeffington was an engineer and he went on business trips for his firm. He was nearly always away during the week. According to Rose: ‘He’s just as bad as she is, and that’s saying something. Their tempers fit each other, hand and glove. You wait till he comes back and you’ll hear something. He reminds me of my stepfather – pots and kettles flying and both of them screaming and the kid yelling its head off. It’s good as the pictures, if you don’t want to get some sleep.’

Rose’s stepfather haunted her conversations. She would sit moodily on my bed, listening to Mrs Skeffington nagging at the child overhead, saying from time to time: ‘You wait till he comes, you haven’t heard nothing yet.’ And, inevitably, the next phrase would be – My stepfather.

‘Wasn’t he good to you?’

‘Good?’ A word as direct as that always made her uncomfortable. ‘I wouldn’t like to say anything against him, see.’ Then, after a moment: ‘He was a bad-tempered, lying, cheating swine of a bully – God rest his soul, I wouldn’t say bad things of the dead,’ she would conclude, apologetically.

She had no pity for Mrs Skeffington at all. I could never understand why Rose, who was so tender-hearted, shut her sympathy off from the threesome upstairs. Once I suggested we should tell the NSPCC, and she was so shocked that she could scarcely bring herself to speak to me for days. At last I went to her room and asked her why she was so angry. ‘I didn’t know you was one of them nosey-parkers,’ she said.

‘But, Rose, what’s going to happen to that poor baby?’

‘They’ll take it away from her, most like, and send her to prison. Not that it’s not a good place for her.’

‘Perhaps they might help her.’

‘How? Tell me? What she needs help for, is against her husband and what are they going to do about him? Not that she doesn’t deserve what she gets.’

‘All that’s wrong with her is she’s overworked and tired.’

‘Yes? Well, let me tell you, my mother brought up six of us, and she had no sense for men, real sods they were, but she never carried on like my lady upstairs.’

Meanwhile Miss Powell had moved into the two small rooms above the Skeffingtons. She came down to see me about the child. She wore a red silk gown, trimmed with dark fur, and looked like a film star strayed on to the wrong set. She was very sensible. She suggested we should talk to Mr Skeffington when he came home and tell him his wife needed a holiday.

As soon as she had gone, Rose came in to demand what I though I was doing, talking to that whore.

I said we had agreed to tax Mr Skeffington, and Rose said: ‘You make me laugh, you do. At least the Skeffingtons are decently married, they aren’t a whore and Mr Bobby Brent.’

Flo said to me, her eyes dancing. ‘Mr Skeffington’s coming back tomorrow. You wait till you see him,’ she urged – for it was one of the days she did not like Mrs Skeffington. ‘You just lean over the banisters and have a look. Like a film star, he is. He’s got eyes that make me feel funny, just like Bobby Brent.’ For some days Mrs Skeffington was saying to the child: ‘Your daddy will beat you if you aren’t a good girl.’

‘I am a good girl.’

‘You’ll see, he’ll beat you. For God’s sake, keep quiet now, Rosemary.’

When he did come, I heard the following dialogue through the floor: ‘It’s always the same. As soon as I come home, you start complaining.’

‘But I can’t keep a home going on what I earn.’

‘I told you before I married you, I’ve got to pay alimony. Sometimes I’m sorry I ever did. Can’t you keep that kid quiet?’

‘I can’t help it if Rosemary’s a naughty girl.’

‘I’m not a naughty girl,’ wailed Rosemary.

‘Don’t start,’ he said aggressively. ‘Now don’t start, that’s all.’

The child wept. Mrs Skeffington wept, and Mr Skeffington went out, slamming the door, five minutes after he’d come home.

Rose came in. ‘You heard?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘You still think you’re going to talk them into sense?’

‘No, not really.’

‘I told you. You’ve got a lot to learn …’

‘All the same, what about the baby?’

‘What you don’t know yet is, there’s some people you can’t do nothing about.’ She offered me a cigarette, as a sign she was forgiving me. ‘I’ve been thinking about you, dear. Your trouble is this. You think, all you’ve got to do is say something, and then things’ll be right. Well, they won’t be. You leave that pair of love-birds upstairs alone. Because I tell you what’s going to happen. He’s left one wife with kids already. He’s not one to stick. And he’ll leave her, too. And then she’ll be better off and her temper’ll improve. You’ll see.’

Later Mr Skeffington came in. Soon we heard her plead: ‘Oh not tonight, not tonight, Ron. I’m so tired. I was up with Rosemary all last night.’ Rose grinned at me, nodding, as if to say: There. I told you. He said: ‘I’ve been away two weeks and that’s what I get when I come home.’ ‘Oh, Ron, darling.’ A comparative silence. We heard his voice, adjusted to tenderness. Complete silence. Then the child started to cry. Mrs Skeffington wailed: ‘Oh, Rosemary, Rosemary, can’t you ever stop?’ She must have been up most of the night. At seven the alarm shrilled so long that most of the house was aroused. Finally there came a shock and a crash as the clock was flung across the room. ‘Oh, Ronnie,’ said Mrs Skeffington, ‘now you’ve woken Rosemary.’

He was a slight, fair, dandyish young man, with a jaunty moustache. If any of us women, Rose, Flo, myself, Miss Powell were carrying something on the stairs, we could not take two steps before we found him beside us: ‘A pleasure,’ he would say, assisting us on our way. His wife carried all her own burdens. She got up at seven every day, washed and dressed and fed the child, and took it to the council nursery school. She came back at lunchtime to cook her husband his meal. She finally collected the little girl at six, having spent her day cooking in a nearby cafe. Her evenings she spent cleaning and cooking.

At nine in the morning, Ronnie Skeffington, smelling of shaving soap and hair lotion, would emerge from the bathroom in a silk dressing-gown, and proceed upstairs with the newspapers. His breakfast had been cooked for him and was waiting in the oven. At ten he went off to work, and came back at one, expecting to find his lunch ready. He usually did not come home until late at night.

‘Say what you like,’ said Flo, ‘that Ronnie, that Miss Powell, they give the house class. Imagine now, if you was to open the door and there was Mr Skeffington, all polite and brushed, you’d think this house has got nice flats in it, now wouldn’t you?’

‘Don’t start putting up the rents yet,’ said Rose, dryly, after one such flight.

‘Rents, I didn’t say nothing about rents, dear.’

‘No, I’m just telling you not to start.’

There were two rooms beneath mine and Rose’s. An old couple lived there. I never heard them. I never saw them. When I asked Rose about them, her face would put on the sorrowful guilty look which meant that over this matter her loyalty was to Flo. She would say: ‘Don’t worry about them. There’s nothing to tell.’ When I asked Flo, she said: ‘They’re filthy old beasts, but they don’t worry you, do they?’

About a week after I moved down beside Rose, Flo came in to ask me down to supper that night. I thanked her. She lingered, looking hurt. ‘Don’t you want to come, darling?’ ‘But of course I do. I’d love to.’ She embraced me, saying: ‘There, I knew you would. I told Dan.’

My trouble with Flo was that she was uneasy unless she got exaggerated reactions of delight, complaint, or shock to her own dramatized emotions. If I did not at first react suitably, she would prod me until I did. ‘There! You’re laughing,’ she would say, in relief. ‘That’s right. Laugh.’ Or, hopefully: ‘Aren’t you shocked? Of course you are. I knew you would be.’

Rose said: ‘It’s no use your being all English with Flo. It gets her all upset.’

As for Rose, she could communicate a saga of sorrow with a slight droop of her mouth; the climax to a tale about her stepfather would be indicated by the folding together, in resignation, of her two small hands in her lap, not a word spoken. Her single syllable, Yes? could silence anyone in the house.

Rose made Flo uneasy, too. When she wanted to punish Flo she would sit, impassive, listening, refusing to register emotion, offering me the faintest of malicious smiles, until Flo said: ‘Ah, my Lord, you’re cross with me. Why are you cross with your Flo?’

I knew that the invitation to supper meant more than I understood. I had to come to know that a complicated ritual governed what went on in the house. I did not at first think about it, out of an emotion which I now realize was a middle-class hypocrisy about the value of money, the value of time. But Rose made it impossible for me not to think.

About the supper invitation she said: ‘I thought she would. She feels bad about getting too much for your rooms. She was expecting you to make her clean your rooms.’

‘I asked her to.’

‘She doesn’t like housework.’

‘Who does? But she came up and gave me a lesson about dusting and cleaning and ironing.’

‘I’d like to have seen it,’ said Rose. ‘What was your mother thinking of, sending you out into the world so ignorant?’

‘That’s what Flo said, too.’

‘Yes. Well, now she thinks she’ll make up by inviting you to eat sometimes. And, believe you me, it’s better that way, because she’s a cook better than anyone, even my mother.’ But just before we prepared ourselves to go down to supper, she became uneasy, and said: ‘You mustn’t mind Flo when she gets dirty-mouthed. Just laugh to please her and take no notice.’

On weekdays, the family did not eat together until the men came in from work, about six. This meal was called tea. No one went to bed until late, after midnight. At about eleven was another meal, called supper. At both Flo served a rich variety of foods. There was always a basis of salads, cake, different kinds of bread and cheeses and fruit. Flo always cooked a different, fresh main dish for both meals. It might be spaghetti, some kind of meat, a pie, or chicken. The late meal, just before everyone went to bed, was the one they most enjoyed and lingered over. Besides, it was by tradition what Flo called a dirt session.

On that evening when Rose and I went downstairs, the men were already waiting to be served at the table. They wore, as always after work, clean white singlets. The basement was always steaming hot from the stove and from the electric fire which was never turned off. Flo was making a cauldron of spaghetti which filled the steamy air full of the odours of garlic and olive oil and meat and cheese. We sat around the table, sprawling, our elbows resting, while Flo heaped our plates. Aurora, who never went to bed before her parents, was sitting on Dan’s lap. She had on a white tight nightgown, over which her black curls, Flo’s pride, cascaded to her waist. She had her arm around Dan’s thick neck, and was sucking her thumb. Although there were blue bruises of fatigue beneath her eyes, she continued to observe everything that went on, sleepily blinking, and nodding off, then forcing herself awake. Her smile seemed as full of sharp knowledgeable enjoyments as Flo’s.

Dan’s attitude to me was the same as his to Rose: he watched us appreciatively, savouring our possibilities, but with caution. Flo kept a sharp eye on his every glance.

She served herself last, and sat down, sighing, saying: ‘After all that gammon I ate before I haven’t room for a bite.’ We all ate enormously and praised Flo’s art from time to time, which she took as her due with a modest and satisfied smile. Dan chewed in ferocious mouthfuls, his white teeth glistening through the sauce, strands hanging from the corners of his lips. From time to time he pushed a spoonful into Aurora’s mouth, but she always made a face, chewed once or twice, and sat with the food, unswallowed, in her mouth.

‘That kid’s too sleepy to eat,’ Rose said.

‘It’s no good putting her to sleep until we go,’ said Flo. ‘She’ll just scream and scream.’

‘She needs a good spanking,’ said Rose. There was always a touch of sullenness in her voice when she mentioned Aurora. She disapproved of how she was brought up.

‘But I spank her, I do,’ said Flo eagerly, with a warm loving smile at Aurora, to which the child responded, like an accomplice.

When we could eat not another mouthful of spaghetti, or salad or cake, Flo took away the plates, and sat down again, her eyes bright and black, looking for an opening.

‘Look at your belly,’ she said suddenly to Rose, who had loosened her waist-band.

Rose gave me a glance which said: This was what I meant, don’t take any notice. She said to Flo, with careful unconcern: ‘What of it, after all that food?’

‘You look seven months. Doesn’t she, Jack? Doesn’t she, Dan?’

Dan grinned; Jack’s smile was eager and timid. Flo drew our attention to Jack, and said: ‘Look at him. He’d like to have a little bit with Rose.’ Jack blushed and looked eagerly, in spite of himself, at Rose. Who said good-naturedly: ‘Who, me? I don’t want a little boy in my bed.’

‘He’s got to learn sometime,’ Flo said.

‘Yes?’ said Rose. ‘Then why pick on me? I’ve got to learn, too.’

‘That’s what I keep telling you,’ Flo said. ‘How old are you now? And as innocent as a baby.’

‘She’s twenty-three,’ said Dan to me, nodding and winking.

‘You shut up,’ said Rose to him, ‘you’re as old as you feel.’

‘It’s time you did feel,’ said Flo. ‘I keep telling you, Dan’s brother is like Dan, he likes a woman who knows a thing.’

Rose, who was suffering because of the long quarrel, which I still knew nothing about, with Dickie, Dan’s brother, looked annoyed and put a stop to this hare – ‘Then if Dickie wants it, regardless, he can pay for it.’

Jack sniggered. He sat listening, shocked, delighted, suffering, turning his eyes from one to another. Against the open, savage sensuality of Dan and Flo, and the heavy immobile good-nature Rose put on for these occasions, he looked defenceless and pathetic.

‘Yes. And he will, too, if he can get better.’ Suddenly she screamed at Dan: ‘Go on, Dan, tell her. Tell Rose about that dirty French girl. Tell what she did to you, the dirty beast.’

Dan smiled, and sat silent. Flo, aroused and angry, yet delighted; screamed again: ‘Well, tell her, go on.’

‘I don’t want to hear,’ said Rose primly, who had heard it often before.

‘Oh, yes you do. And you do too, don’t you, darling?’ – This to me, in a hasty aside. ‘Go on, Dan.’

Dan began. At first he kept his eyes on Rose, who sighed continuously with prepared digust. But soon he turned his glistening yellow gaze at his wife, who glanced back at him, terrified and squealing with delight.

‘And now you two had better go to bed,’ commented Rose, heavily, when the story was over.

‘What for, darling, we’re not sleepy, are we, Dan?’ Flo said, very innocent, catching our eyes one after another around the table.

Dan remained, heavily sitting and smiling and watching his wife, while Aurora sat smiling sleepily in his arms.

‘For God’s sake, put Aurora to bed,’ said Rose, disgusted. ‘Put her to sleep at least.’

Flo said: ‘Yes. Poor little girl, she’s sleepy.’ She whisked Aurora out of her father’s arms. Aurora let out a single howl of routine protest, and let her head fall on her mother’s shoulder.

‘Yes, she’s sleepy all right,’ said Flo, looking down at the child with a sort of malicious satisfaction. She took Aurora next door, while Rose grimaced at me, the corners of her mouth turned down, her eyebrows raised. Dan, now Flo was gone, was openly inciting both of us, grinning at us, his yellow eyes flaring.

Flo came back and saw him. ‘Ah, my Lord,’ she said sighing, ‘it’s a crime for a man like him to be wasted on one woman.’

‘Lend him to me tonight,’ said Rose, smiling and full of mischief at Dan.

‘Yes,’ said Dan. ‘Listen to you. And what would I get if I even so much as touched Rose?’

‘You try it and see,’ said Flo, giggling. She yawned, dramatically, and said: ‘Oh, I’m ever so sleepy. And there’s all that washing-up.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Rose.

‘Then I’ll just pop off into bed,’ said Flo, lingering in the bedroom door, her eyes on Dan. She went in and shut the door, while Dan sat a moment, smiling in appreciation. Jack was breathing heavily, looking at his stepfather with resentment, with wonder, with admiration, with hate. After a moment Dan rose and said to Jack: ‘You turn off the lights. Don’t forget now.’ He followed his wife into the bedroom, loosening his belt.

Jack, Rose and I remained. Now Rose’s attitude became brisk and maternal, encouraging no nonsense. She whisked through the washing and drying, while I helped her, and the boy sat despondently at the table, caressing a puppy, smiling at us, hoping for Rose to soften. He even made a sad little attempt to restore the sexy atmosphere by saying: ‘You do look seven months gone, Rose, like Flo said.’ But she said calmy: ‘And what do you know about it?’ When we left him, she patted his shoulder with triumphant patronage, and said: ‘Sleep tight. And keep your dreams clean.’

He slept in the kitchen on a stretcher, beside a box full of puppies. He was like a puppy himself – sleek, eager, and wistful.

I thought Rose treated him badly. When I said so, she gave me her heavy-lidded look, half-triumphant, half-sardonic, and said: ‘And why’s that? He’s a kid.’

‘Then don’t tease him.’

She was indignant. She did not understand me. I did not understand her. She was shocked because Jack, later, wandered in and out of my room, to talk about a film he’d just seen, or about his boxing. She was shocked when Bobby Brent dropped in at midnight with a business proposition before going upstairs to Miss Powell. No man was ever allowed inside her room. But she would go down to the basement in a waist slip and brassière, and if either Dan or Jack looked at her she would say scathingly: ‘Nothing better to polish your eyes on?’ in precisely the same way a fashionable woman might pointedly draw a cloak over her naked arms and shoulders at an over-direct stare from a man. I remember once Jack knocked on my door when I had a petticoat on, and I put on a dressing-gown before answering the door and letting him in. Rose said, amused: ‘You think he’s never seen a woman in a slip before?’ and teased me about being prudish. One night she was sitting in front of my fireplace in her nightgown, and Jack was lying on the floor turning over the physical culture magazines he read, when she unconcernedly lifted a bare arm to scratch where her brassiere had left a red mark under her breast. Jack said bitterly: ‘Oh, don’t mind me, please. I’m nothing but a bit of furniture.’

‘What’s biting you?’ she enquired, and when he blundered to his feet and slammed out of my room, swearing, she said to me, with perfect sincerity: ‘He’s a funny boy, isn’t he, all full of moods.’

‘But Rose, how can you tantalize him like that?’

‘Well, I don’t know, dear. I don’t really, the things you say, they’d make me blush if I didn’t know you. I can see I’m going to have to tell you about life.’

She had now taken my education over. It had begun over money, and when I got a job with a small engineering firm as secretary. I was earning seven pounds a week. I said something to Rose about living on seven pounds a week; and she gave me her heavy-lidded smile. ‘You make me laugh,’ she said.

‘But I do,’ I said. I was paying the fees for the council nursery, the rent, and the food out of that money. I found it hard, but it gave me pleasure to be able to do it.

‘For one thing,’ said Rose, settling down to the task of instructing me. ‘For one thing, there’s clothes. You and the kid, you have all the clothes you brought with you. Now suppose there was a fire tomorrow, what’d you use for money for clothes?’

‘But there isn’t going to be a fire.’

‘Why not? Look how you live. It’s enough to make a cat laugh. You say to yourself, well I’m having some bad luck just now, so you pull your belt a bit tighter, while it lasts. That’s not being poor. You always go on as if you’ll win the pools tomorrow.’

‘Well, I hate having to worry all the time about what might happen.’

‘Yes?’ said Rose, silencing me.

‘All right, then, you show me.’

‘Yes, I’m going to. Because you worry me, you do really. Suppose you don’t get married, suppose that book of yours isn’t any good?’

I was ready to listen, because this was one of the times when I believed I might not write again. I found I was too tired at night to write. My day, for some weeks, went like this. My son woke early, and I dressed and fed him and took him to the nursery before going to work. At lunchtime I went to the shops, took food home and cleaned the place out. I picked him up from the nursery at five; and by the time he was fed and bathed and read to, and he was ready for sleep, it was about nine. Then, in theory, was my time for writing. But not only could I not write, I could not even imagine myself writing. The personality ‘writer’ was so far removed from me, it was like thinking about another person, not myself. As it turned out, after two months or so, I got an advance from a publisher on a previously-written book, and my troubles were over. But during that time, I was ready to listen to Rose’s strictures.

‘No,’ she would say patiently, as she took the match from my fingers and replaced it carefully in the box. ‘Not like that. Why, when there’s a fire burning?’ She tore a strip of newspaper, made a spill, and lit her cigarette and mine.

She would say: ‘I have a friend, you don’t know her. She went into the chemist at the corner for a lipstick. But she could have got the same lipstick along the road for tuppence less. There’s no sense in that. She’s got no sense at all. She dropped some tea on her skirt. Well, round the corner there’s a cleaner would’ve done it for one-and-nine. But she just goes into the nearest and pays two-and-six. Where’s the sense in it? Can you tell me?’

Rose earned four pounds a week. She was underpaid, and knew it. The managers of shops in the neighbourhood were always offering her better-paid jobs; but she wanted to stay where she was because Dickie, Dan’s brother, worked in a cigarette shop across the street. Nor would she ask her employer for a rise. ‘I do all the work in that place,’ she said. ‘She just runs off to shop and carry-on, leaving me there alone. That husband of hers, all he knows about is the inside of watches. If a customer comes in, he diddles about, and loses everything and then shouts Rose, Rose. And I know how much money they make because I see the books. Well, if they don’t know the right way to behave, the way I look at it, it’s their funeral. Let them enjoy their guilty consciences. They know I’m worth twice that money to them. Well, if they think I’m going down on my knees to ask for it, I’m not going to give them that pleasure, they needn’t think it.’

Rose lived well inside her four pounds a week. What it cost her to do it were time and leisure, commodities she knew the value of, but which she did not consider to be her right. Half an hour’s skilled calculations might go into working out whether it was worth taking a bus to another part of London where she knew there was a nail varnish at sixpence less than where we lived. She would muse aloud, like this: ‘If I go by bus, that’s three-halfpence. Threepence altogether. I’d save threepence on the varnish. If I walk there’s shoe-leather, and what repairs cost these days, it’s not worth it. I know,’ she concluded, triumphant. ‘I’ll wear those shoes of mine that pinch me, and then it won’t cost nothing at all.’ We would walk together to the shop where the nail varnish was sixpence cheaper, and she would snatch up her prize from the rich market of London, saying: ‘There, see, what did I tell you? Now I’m sixpence to the good.’ But walking back she would stop on an impulse to buy half a pound of cherries from one of the despised barrow-boys, against whom she was continually warning me, so that the saved sixpence was thrown to the winds; but that was different, that was pleasure. ‘I’ll have to go easy on cigarettes tomorrow,’ she would say, smiling delightedly. ‘But it’s worth it.’

All her carefuly handling of money was to this end – that she might buy pleasure: that once in six months she could take a taxi instead of walking, and tip the taxi driver threepence more than was necessary; that she could buy a pair of good nylons once a week; that she could throw money away on fruit when the fancy took her, instead of walking down to the street markets and getting it cheap.

Inside this terrible, frightening city, Rose had created for herself a sort of tunnel, shored against danger by habit, known buildings, and trusted people. Rose’s London was the half-mile of streets where she had been born and brought up, populated by people she trusted; the house where she now lived, surrounded by them – mostly hostile people; and the West End. She knew every face we saw in the area we lived in, and if she did not, made it her business to find out. She knew every policeman and plain-clothes man who might pounce on her if she did not do right; she would nudge me and point out some man on a pavement, saying: ‘See ‘im? He’s a copper in civvies. Makes me sick. Well, I wonder who he’s after this time.’ She spoke with a melancholoy respect, almost pride.

Rose’s West End was a fixed journey, on a certain bus route, to a certain Corner House and one of half a dozen cinemas. It was walking back up Regent Street for window shopping.

Flo’s London did not even include the West End, since she had left the restaurant in Holborn. It was the basement she lived in; the shops she was registered at; and the cinema five minutes’ walk away. She had never been inside a picture gallery, a theatre or a concert hall. Flo would say: ‘Let’s go to the River one fine afternoon and take Oar.’ She had not seen the Thames, she said, since before the war. Rose had never been on the other side of the river. Once, when I took my son on a trip by river bus, Rose played with the idea of coming too for a whole week. Finally she said: ‘I don’t think I’d like those parts, not really. I like what I’m used to. But you go and tell me about it after.’

On the evenings when Rose decided life owed her some fun, she would say to me: ‘You’re coming with me to the West End tonight, whether you like it or not.’ She began to dress a good hour before it was time to start. I could hear her bath running downstairs, and the smell of her bath powder drifted up through the house. Soon afterwards she came in, without make-up, looking young and excited. I never found out how old she was. She used to say, with a laugh, she was twenty-three, but I think she was about thirty.

‘Rose, I wish you wouldn’t put on so much make-up.’

‘Don’t be silly. If I don’t wear plenty, Dickie says to me, what’s up with you, are you flying the red flag?’

‘But you haven’t seen Dickie for weeks.’

‘But we might run into him. That’s one of the reasons I’m taking you. He always takes me where we’re going, and if he’s got another woman, then I’ll catch him out and have a good laugh.’

Soon she had painted her daytime face over her real face, and had moulded her hair into a solid mass of black scrolls and waves. When Rose was dressed and made-up she always looked the same. She was conforming to some image of herself that was not the fashionable image for that year, but about three years ago. She took fashion papers, but the way we were supposed to look that year struck her as being extreme. She used to laugh at the pictures of fashion models, say: ‘They do look silly, don’t they?’ and go off to her room to make herself into something that seemed to her safe and respectable, because she was used to it.

‘Come on, get yourself dressed.’

‘But I am dressed.’

‘If you’re coming out with me, then you’ve got to dress up.’

She pulled out the dress she wanted me to wear, and stood over me till I put it on. She knew I did not like the Corner House, but tolerated my dislike. She was only exerting her rights as a neighbour, exactly as I might go into her and say: ‘I’m depressed, please come and sit with me.’ At such times she put aside whatever she was occupied with, and came at once; she recognized a tone in my voice; she knew what was due to communal living.

We always walked to the bus-stop, and it had to be the same bus-stop, and the same bus, though there were several which would have done. She kept pulling me back, saying: ‘No, not that bus. That’s not the number I like.’ And if the bus did not have seats free, downstairs, on the left-hand side, she would wait until one came that had. She made me sit near the window. She liked to sit on the aisle, and she held her exact fare in her hand, watching the conductor until he came for it. She handed it over with a firm look, as if to say: ‘I’m not trying to get away with anything.’ And she put away the ticket in a certain pocket in her handbag – one could not be too careful.

But this ritual was for when we went out, because on ordinary occasions she would take the first bus that came, and sit anywhere and was not above diddling the company out of tuppence on the fare if she could. Pleasure was different, and part of pleasure was to pay for it.

At the Corner House there was always a queue. I might say: ‘It’ll be half an hour at least.’ I regarded queueing as tedious. Rose did not. On one occasion, after we had been twenty minutes in the queue, and were nearly at its head, a woman tried to push in front of us. And then Rose the meek, Rose the resigned, Rose, who would spend a whole evening on her knees with a bucket and a brush because she could not say No to Flo; Rose who would stay up till two in the morning ironing and washing Dickie’s shirts, and then redamp and re-iron them if there was the slightest crease in the collar – and all this devotion at a time when she was not even seeing him; this patient and enduring woman suddenly set her feet apart, put her hands on her hips, and allowed her eyes to flash. ‘Excuse me!’ she began in a belligerent voice, glancing at the rest of the queue for support. Every one was, of course, on her side; every one had been schooled by years of practice in queue-ethics, and had been watching, just as she had, with ox-eyed impassivity for some imposter to push forward. Rose pulled the offender by the elbow and said: ‘Here, you haven’t queued, get to the back.’ The woman smiled in uncertain bravado, opened her mouth to fight, saw the hostile faces all around her, and then, with a pert shrug of her shoulders, went to the back of the queue.

Rose said loudly: ‘People trying to get away with things.’ And she stood triumphantly, standing up for her rights.

When at last our group, which had stood on the fringe of the table-packed space for at least ten minutes, were waved forward by a waiter like a policeman directing traffic, Rose tipped him and whispered, and we were taken to a table immediately by the band. Rose liked to sit just there; it meant she could lean over and ask for the tunes she wanted. She said: ‘You can get the music you want without tipping the waiter to ask for you.’ But that was not the reason. It was that it gave her a feeling of homely satisfaction to be able to smile at the drummer, and get a nod and a smile back again.

She did not like the food much. She used to say: ‘Flo’s spoiled me, she has really.’ But she always ordered the same: beans on toast, with chips and spaghetti. I could not understand why until she said: ‘That’s what we used to get during the war in the canteen. It reminds me, see?’

We used to stay for about two hours, eating and submitting to the music. Then she stretched herself and said: ‘Thanks for coming, dear. I haven’t seen that so-and-so Dickie, but I’ve enjoyed it ever so much.’

Then we walked up Regent Street, very slowly, stopping at each window, criticizing every dress or pair of shoes. Rose had a different standard for these clothes than for the ones she wore herself. She judged these against the current fashions and was critical. She chose dresses for film stars she liked, not for herself. Sometimes we went the whole street without her approving of anything. She would say: ‘Lot of rubbish today, isn’t there? Not anything I’d like to see Betty Grable in. Sometimes I think those fashion-men think we’re fools, with more money than sense.’

Going home on the bus we played her favourite game – spending the money she was going to win in the football pools. She never had less than ten thousand pounds to spend. She was going to buy herself a mink coat, some expensive clothes, and a little restaurant for herself and Dickie. She had chosen the house she wanted. It had a garden for the children she intended to have, and was about ten minutes from where we lived, with a ‘For Sale’ sign on it. We often went there in the evenings to look at it. ‘I hope it won’t be sold too soon,’ she’d say, ‘not before I win the pools.’ And then – ‘Listen to me, talking silly. Still, someone’s got to win it, haven’t they?’

‘When autumn comes,’ she said, ‘I’ll teach you about the pools. I look forward to the pools all the summer. It gives you some excitement in life, doing the pools every week and waiting to hear who’s won.’

She paid Flo thirty shillings a week for her room. It was understood that for this sum she could eat Sunday dinner with the family. It was also understood that if she was invited to another meal during the week, she must pay for it in washing-up or scrubbing or ironing. Her rent included an early morning cup of tea. Rose never drank this, because she slept till the last minute before rushing off to work, so that the tea, left outside her room by Jack, who left for work an hour before she did, was always cold. But if he forgot to leave it there, she made a state trip downstairs, to say: ‘I like people to keep their word. If I pay for a thing, then it’s my affair what I do with it afterwards.’ So every morning the cup of tea cooled outside her door, and was later emptied into the sink by Flo, who grumbled good-naturedly: ‘Some people!’

Rose did not eat breakfast. ‘Why waste money eating when you’re still full of sleep, anyway?’ She ate a sausage roll or a sandwich at midday. These odd snacks during the day cost her ten shillings; she did not eat seriously unless invited by Flo. Two pounds left out of her earnings. She smoked ten cigarettes a day – another ten shillings.

That left her thirty shillings. On pay-day she arranged this balance on her dressing-table and played with it, frowning and smiling, talking of how she might spend it.

She did not plan for holidays: when she had time off she went down to stay with her mother. Nor did she go to parties. Sometimes she dropped down to the Palais at Hammersmith on a Wednesday evening, and came back dispirited: ‘None of them were as good as Dickie, say what you like. They just make me laugh.’

In the end, the money always went on clothes. And in a way which was richly satisfactory to Rose, because she seldom bought in shops, only things like gloves and nylons. She got her clothes from her employer. That fat pale woman spent a great deal on her clothes, and luckily for Rose had only just put on weight. Her cupboards were full of things she would never wear again. Rose would haggle over a dress or a suit she coveted for months, until at last she came in, victorious, saying: ‘I’ve got it for twenty-seven-and-six, there go my cream cakes for a month, not to mention the pictures, but look, this dress cost that fat bitch twenty-five guineas.’ So it was, when Rose was dressed to go out, she looked as if what she wore had cost her six months’ wages. She would stand for a long time in front of the tall looking-glass in my room, surveying herself with grim satisfaction. Finally she would say: ‘Well, it only goes to show, doesn’t it?’ a remark into which was concentrated her attitute towards the rich and the talented, an attitude without envy or sourness, but which was full of self-respect, and implicit in everything she said or did.

And yet, although she dressed herself through these means, she was upset when I said I was going to sell some of my clothes to the second-hand shops. ‘You don’t want to do that,’ she protested.

‘They’re too big for you, or you could have them.’

‘And what would I be doing with all those evening dresses?’ She examined them, and said: ‘Well, you must have had a good time where you came from.’

‘Everyone dances there. It’s a place where people dance a lot.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s not expensive to dance.’

‘Yes?’

‘But it’s true.’

‘Yes? All I know is, dancing is floor-space and a band and things to eat and drink. That’s money. Who pays for it? Someone does.’

‘All the same, I want to sell these things, they’re no good to me.’

‘Well, don’t sell them around here, that’s all.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s not nice, is it. People might see, and say things.’

‘Why should I care?’

‘Yes? Well, I do. People see you and me together. Then they see you selling clothes, to those old shops. Yes, I know – you’ll go off one of these days, but I’m living here. So to please me you can just take a bus ride and sell them somewhere else.’

When I had sold them, she enquired: ‘And how much did you get? Enough for cigarettes for a couple of weeks? Oh, I know, don’t tell me. And so you’ve gone and lowered yourself in those dirty old shops, just for that. It’s all right for film stars and models, it stands to reason, everyone knows they can wear a thing once, but not for people like us. You’d do better to keep them and look at them sometimes and remember the good times you had than sell them for cigarette money.’

‘You can talk about cigarettes, going without food to smoke.’

‘And who’s talking, I’d like to know?’

Both of us suffered over cigarettes. I came from a country where they were cheap. I had always smoked a lot. Now I was cut down to half my usual allowance. Rose and I made complicated rules for ourselves, to keep within limits. We tried to smoke as few as possible in the day, to leave plenty for our long gossip sessions at nights. But our plans were always being upset by Flo. There was more rancour created in that house over cigarettes than over anything else. Rose might grumble a little if Flo had forgotten to ask her to supper on an evening when ‘she felt like eating’. She would say: ‘All very well for her, licking and tasting away all day over her stove,’ but shrug it off. For food was something one could do without. But if Flo borrowed a cigarette and forgot to pay it back, Rose would sulk. And, of course, with Flo it was never a question of one cigarette. She would cadge from me, from Rose, from Miss Powell, beg from the milkman or the gas-man. ‘I’ll give it to you next time you come,’ she would say, anxiously grabbing at the offered cigarette.

She could afford to buy as many as she liked. But she never bought enough. Five minutes after she returned from a shopping trip she would come up to Rose’s room, and say: ‘Give your Flo a fag, dear.’

‘But you’ve just gone out shopping.’

‘But I forgot.’

‘I’ve got four left for the evening.’

‘I’ll pay you back tomorrow.’

‘What you mean is, I’ve got to do without this evening.’

‘I’m dying for a smoke.’

‘You owe me nine cigarettes as it is.’

At which Flo hastily thrust into Rose’s hands her sweet coupons for the week.

‘I don’t like sweets, you know that,’ said Rose, handing them back. ‘Why don’t you ask Dan – he’ll be in in five minutes.’

‘Oh, but he gets so cross with me, he gets so he won’t talk to me, if I ask. I owe him so many already.’

‘Flo. What you mean is, I’ve got to go without, then?’

‘Look, darling! Look, sweetheart, here’s one and six. That’s nine cigarettes. I had it in my pocket all ready. You thought I’d forgotten. Well, I don’t forget like that. Here, take the money.’

‘I don’t want the money. I’m not going to get dressed and go out again just because you get more fun out of cadging than out of buying them, straight and sensible.’

‘Oh, my God, you’re cross with me, darling, you’re cross with your Flo.’ A few seconds later, a knock on my door.

‘Darling, sweetheart, give your Flo a cigarette.’

I used to give her cigarettes. That is, I used to at the beginning. But I could not withstand Rose’s fury. She would get beside herself with rage when Flo had helped herself, and crept out, victorious, flushed with guilt, trying to get past Rose’s door without being heard.

Rose came into me. ‘You mean, you gave her some?’

‘It’s only some cigarettes.’

‘What do you mean, only? She can afford to smoke eighty a day if she wants.’

‘Don’t be so angry, Rose.’

‘I am angry. You make me sick. I hate to see somebody getting something for nothing. And you let her get away with it. Did you know, she even borrows from that dirty Miss Powell upstairs?’

‘The cigarettes are clean enough.’

‘If you think that’s a joke … don’t you let me catch you handing out free smokes to Flo again. What’s right is right.’ She began to smile, her anger all gone. ‘Do you know what?’

‘What?’

‘I paid Dickie out again today. I bought my cigarettes from the kiosk and not from him.’

All through this long period of estrangement, Rose had been going into the shop, as always, to get her ten from Dickie. He would see her come in; lift his eyebrows, hum a tune, to show indifference, and lay her favourite brand on the counter. She would lay the money beside the packet, wait for the change, and go out, like a stranger.

‘Do you know what? Dickie made me laugh today. I paid for my cigarettes with a pound note today. Of course I had change, but I pretended not to. And I knew he wouldn’t because it was first thing Monday. And we’re not speaking, see? So he couldn’t say, he didn’t have change in the till. And I was standing there, waiting. So he took the change out of his pocket, and gave it to me. But I just took it all for granted, and sailed away, not even saying thanks.’

On days when she felt black-hearted, she waited until Dickie’s counter was clear of people, and he was looking out, to make an entrance into the kiosk next door. It was run by a good-looking youth who wanted to take Rose out. She would make a point of staying in there talking and flirting for as long as possible. At evening she would say: ‘I paid Dickie out today. But I think it hurts me more than it hurts him. Because I look forward to getting my fags from him. And I’m so soft, I don’t like to think he’s hurt, if he thinks I like Jim. Jim’s the one at the kiosk, see? Well, I don’t like to hurt him. And so when he sent his shirts and socks into my shop for me to do for him, I just slipped in a new pair of socks I knew he’d like.’

‘I’m damned if I’d wash and iron for a man who’s stood me up.’

‘The point is, I don’t care about nobody else, even if I try, like when I go to the Palais. But the way I think is, he’ll feel different when we’re married and he settles down.’

‘But, meanwhile, he’s taking out someone else?’

At this her face hardened; she had the look of a deaf person, listening to his own thoughts. ‘He’ll be different when we’re married,’ she repeated, with anxiety.

Meanwhile, she was getting more and more depressed. Night after night, when she had had her bath, and was ready for bed, she would knock on my door and say: ‘I’ve got the ’ump. I’ve got to be with someone.’ And she sat, without waiting for me to speak.

I was depressed, too, because I was not writing. We weren’t good for each other. Flo might come in at midnight, to find out what the citizens of her kingdom were up to, and find us sitting on either side of the fire, smoking and silent. ‘God preseve us,’ she would say. ‘The Lord help me. Look at you both. Sorry for yourselves, that’s what.’ Rose would raise her eyes, and sigh, without words.

‘Yes,’ Flo said, examining her, good-natured and disapproving, ‘you think I don’t know. But I do know. What you want, Rose, is a man in your bed.’

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ commented Rose, blowing out fancy smoke patterns and watching them dissolve.

‘Maybe not, she says,’ said Flo to me. ‘Well, I’m right, aren’t I, darling? If you was a friend of Rose’s you’d tell her right. You can’t keep a man by playing hiding-pussy the way she does.’

Rose continued to puff out smoke. ‘We have different ideas,’ she said. ‘It takes all sorts.’

‘Your ideas’d be ever so much more better if you treated Dickie right.’

‘Huh – Dickie!’ said Rose, so that the message might be communicated to Dickie.

Flo said shrewdly: ‘You think you’re going to starve him into kissing your hand. Kiss your arse more likely.’

Rose sighed again, and shut her eyes.

‘Well, aren’t I right, dear?’ – to me. ‘And that goes for you too – if you don’t mind me saying it. A woman’s got no heart for sobbing and sighing when she’s got a man in her bed.’

‘We’re not in the mood for men,’ said Rose. ‘They’re more trouble than they’re worth, and that’s the truth.’

‘Trouble!’ said Flo. ‘Ah, my Lord, and I know it. But I know if you two was tucked up nice and close with a man you fancied you’d not be sitting here all hours, looking like death’s funeral.’

‘We’re talking,’ said Rose. ‘We’re talking serious.’

‘Don’t you fancy a little bit of supper, Rose?’

‘I’m not in the mood for doing your washing-up,’ said Rose, ungraciously, breaking all the rules of the house.

‘My God, who said anything about washing-up?’

‘I am.’

‘You’re not cross with your Flo?’

‘I don’t feel like talking dirty, that’s all.’

‘Dirty, she says?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Oh, my God! Well, I hope you will come to your senses and then you’ll be more pleasure to your friends. Give me a cigarette, darling.’

‘No.’

‘Give your Flo a cigarette?’

I gave her one.

‘That’s right,’ she said, satisfied. ‘And you come down on Sunday for dinner, you two, it’ll do you good.’

She went, genuinely concerned for us both.

‘She means well,’ Rose would say. ‘The thing is, now she’s got her man all safe, she’s not serious. Many’s the good times she and I had together, just like you and me now, before Dan came along. They just took one look and began to quarrel. Well, you can always tell by that, can’t you? Look at my mother and my stepfather. Fight, fight, fight. And in between they were warming up the bed.’

‘Well, you must be depressed if you’re on to your stepfather again.’

‘You can say that. I think of him often. Now I tell you what. You make us both a nice cup of tea, I could do with one, and then I won’t have to go down and listen to all that sex, it just gets me mad for nothing.’

When I had made the tea, she would watch me pouring, and say: ‘And now the sugar.’

‘But I keep telling you, I hate sugar in my tea.’

‘Yes? It’s no good trying to tell you anything, sugar is food, see? And it costs nothing to speak of it. I don’t like it either, but it’s food. I learned that from my mother. She’d pile the sugar into my tea and say: ‘That’ll keep you warm, even though the money’s short this week.’ Because that old so-and-so he was always out of work. And my mother, she’d go out charring, seven days in the week, to earn the money, but it was never enough, not for my lord, her husband.’